University Funding

The Hon. T.T. NGO (15:52): Once again, our nation's universities are under attack from the federal Liberal government. Recently, it has been reported that the Morrison government is embarking on a fresh round of cuts to the academic research of universities. The federal Liberal government has announced that it will remove at least $134 million of university research funding to pay for student places at regional universities.

After years of funding cuts, in 2016 the Turnbull government announced a $50 million extra a year cash boost to the Research Support Program. However, just two years later the Liberal government has announced a $134 million cut to this program. This cut will hurt funding for researchers. It is estimated that at least 550 jobs will be lost as a result of this decision, and that is just from the Group of Eight universities alone.

Vice-chancellors at various universities have warned that they will be forced to slash research as a result of this funding cut, and warn that up to 10,000 students could miss out on a university place. Minister Dan Tehan has tried to defend this cut as 'a small reallocation within the $17 billion higher education budget'. However, the current total support provided by the federal government to universities under the Research Support Program is around $900 million. Clearly, removing a minimum of $134 million from $900 million is a massive cut for researchers at universities to bear.

This funding cut to universities comes at a bad time, when students and young people are dropping out of STEM subjects, such as maths and science, in droves. How can the government talk about encouraging more students to take on these subjects when they see there is no future and the only job they can take is to line up at Centrelink? The federal Liberal government's betrayal of research and development extends across government when it comes to its support for science, technology and innovation.

The broadest measure of this is calculating the R&D spending as a percentage of the national economy. Statistics from 2016 show Australia is sitting at 2.2 per cent. This is well below our Asia-Pacific partners such as Korea, which sits at 4.3 per cent, and Japan, which sits at 3.6 per cent. China is now pouring an equivalent of about $US369 billion into this sector each year. This represents an astonishing growth rate of 18.3 per cent in R&D spending in China, according to research released by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation. Clearly, we have a lot to do simply to keep our heads above water in this important area of public policy.

Even the regional universities that stand to gain funding from the federal Liberal government's announcement are disappointed in how they are being funded. Scott Bowman, the Vice-Chancellor of Central Queensland University, told Fairfax Media that he was, 'quite shocked and quite sad to hear that the money is coming from elsewhere in the university system.' He continued by saying that he was grateful for the extra cash, 'but really, it's just money that we should be getting anyway', as it was the federal government that introduced the funding freeze to regional universities in the first place.

The federal Labor opposition has already pledged to scrap this freeze altogether if it wins government and restore the uncapped, demand-driven system for university places. I call on the federal Liberal government to reverse this funding cut to research and recognise the important role that researchers at our universities play in the economic and social development of our society.